The Bullet and the Ballot Box: The Story of Nepal's Maoist Revolution

296 Pages·2014·2.63 MB·English

by  Aditya Adhikari

THE BULLET AND THE BALLOT BOX
THE BULLET
AND THE
BALLOT BOX
The Story of Nepal’s Maoist Revolution
Aditya Adhikari
First published by Verso 2014
© Aditya Adhikari 2014
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Verso
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www.versobooks.com
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN-13: 978-1-78168-564-8
eISBN-13: 978-1-78168-565-5 (US)
eISBN-13: 978-1-78168-681-2 (UK) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue
record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Adhikari, Aditya.
The bullet and the ballot box : the story of Nepal’s Maoist revolution / Aditya Adhikari.
pages cm
Summary: “In 1996, when Nepal’s Maoists launched their armed rebellion, their ideology was widely
considered obsolete and they had limited public support. By 2008 they had gained access to state power and
their ambitious plan of social transformation dominated the national agenda. How did this become possible?
The Bullet and the Ballot Box offers a rich and sweeping account of a decade of revolutionary upheaval.
Adhikari draws on a broad range of sources, including novels, letters and diaries, to illuminate both the
history and human drama of the Maoist rebellion. An indispensible guide to Nepal’s recent history, the book
also offers a fascinating case study of how communist ideology has been reinterpreted and translated into
political action in the twenty-first century” – Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-78168-564-8 (hardback) 1. Nepal – History – Civil War, 1996–2006. 2. Nepal – Politics and
government – 1990–3. Communism – Nepal – History. 4. Social change – Nepal – History. 5. Elections –
Nepal – History. 6. Political participation – Nepal – History. I. Title.
DS495.6.A332 2014
954.96 – dc23
2014019101
Typeset in Minion Pro by MJ & N Gavan, Truro, Cornwall
Printed in the US by Maple Press
For my parents,
Neelam and Ramesh Adhikari
Contents
Preface
1 The Sun in the Hearts of the People: Origins
2 Democracy and Its Discontents
3 Blinding the Elephant
4 The State at War
5 Among the Believers
6 The Fish in the Sea: Vignettes
7 Blunders and Realignments
8 Uprising
9 The Aftermath of People’s War
Postscript
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface
You can tear down Lenin’s statue
Rip Marxist doctrine to shreds
Bury the history of revolution
Why just the statue?
You might as well chop Lenin’s corpse into pieces And feed
crows and vultures …
It won’t make a difference
O prosperous beings of the world
O capitalists
You who are driven by revenge and rejoice in bloodshed We are
countries. Give us autonomy.
We are nations. Give us liberation.
We are the people. Give us revolution.
– Ahuti1
I
n 1992, when these lines were published, Bishwa Bhakta Dulal, commonly
known as ‘Ahuti’, was a member of the Unity Centre. This was a small
communist party that would later split into two factions, one of which became
the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). Ahuti’s poem declared undying
allegiance to an ideology that was widely thought to have been defeated. It was
as though the poet were trying to smother his anxieties by sheer force of
conviction. Ahuti eventually joined the faction that did not support armed
struggle. But, four years after his poem came out, the rage and anguish felt by
his comrades in the other faction erupted in an armed rebellion that altered the
course of Nepali history.
Most leaders of the Maoist rebellion had come of age during the 1970s, when
Nepal was ruled by an absolute monarch. King Mahendra Shah believed Nepal
was not ready for democracy: he had seized power through a coup in 1960,
banned all political parties and established what was called the Panchayat
system. In Mahendra’s view, this was the only system that could protect and
strengthen the nation’s independence and lead the country towards
modernization. But the Panchayat regime allowed no room for political dissent,
and its modernization programme reinforced rather than eliminated traditional
social hierarchies. In such circumstances, it was natural that large numbers of
young men and women who sought social and political change became drawn to
communism.
In 1990, a popular movement led by a number of banned parties succeeded
in bringing down the Panchayat regime. The Maoists, then scattered among
various marginal factions, were ambivalent about this political gain. Many
others, however, believed that Nepal had finally gained a system that matched
both its citizens’ aspirations and the globally hegemonic paradigm of liberal
democracy. The Nepali Congress, Nepal’s largest party, despite its sometime
profession of socialism, had in practice always been committed to liberalism.
The country’s two largest communist parties, duly chastened by the widespread
liberal triumphalism, united to form the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified
Marxist–Leninist) (CPN–UML), and pledged allegiance to the new
parliamentary order.
With their firm commitment to revolution, the Maoists were thus swimming
against a powerful tide. They not only rejected the parliamentary system, but
also denounced – despite Nepal’s heavy dependence on foreign countries –
‘imperialist’ and ‘expansionist’ powers such as the United States and India. It
was generally thought that no Nepalese government could survive without
Indian support. A political group that was openly hostile towards India was not
expected to go far. Both Nepali and foreign observers saw the Maoists as an
irrelevant and faction-ridden groupuscule obsessed with an obsolete ideology.
But the Maoists remained undeterred. In February 1996 they declared their
People’s War by attacking several police posts in remote parts of the country.
The government led by the Nepali Congress mobilized the police in response.
Despite police reppression, the rebellion spread across the country over the next
few years. The government declared a state of emergency and deployed the
national army. In 2002, the king stepped forward to reclaim his power over the
polity. All foreign powers with influence in Nepal – India, China, the US and the
UK – backed the state against the Maoists, with the US alone providing over 20
million dollars in military aid.
In contrast, the Maoists had no external support. They initially relied on
rudimentary weapons, and operated out of far-flung villages. Most of their cadre
came from poor, rural backgrounds, and a significant section belonged to
marginalized ethnic and caste groups. And yet, by 2005, the Maoists had gained
control over most of Nepal’s countryside, and their rebellion had changed the
face of the nation.
After a decade-long armed struggle, the Maoists finally signed a peace
agreement with the mainstream parties that were opposed to the king’s
usurpation of power. Together they led a historic uprising that brought down the
monarchy and paved the path for elections to a Constituent Assembly, one of the
rebels’ key demands. The Maoists won around 40 per cent of seats in the
Constituent Assembly. Other parties trailed far behind. The Maoists joined the
government, and their political agenda came to dominate Nepal’s public debate.
However, when the Maoists launched the rebellion their ambition had been
much grander: total state control. Now inside mainstream politics, they found
themselves mired in a dysfunctional multiparty system, and were forced to
compromise. Nonetheless, their growth as a political force had been
extraordinary. Despite all the odds stacked against them, they became the only
rebel group in the post–Cold War era to gain state power through Mao’s strategy
of a protracted People’s War. How was this possible?
This question is central to the history of the Maoist rebellion offered in this
book. Many observers say it was poverty that made large sections of the
population receptive to a radical ideology. Others attribute the Maoists’ rise to
the weakness of the state. Indeed, no account that aims to provide a
comprehensive picture of the movement can ignore these points. However, this
book is primarily concerned with what the Marxists call the ‘subjective factor’ –
the personal journeys of Maoists who participated in the rebellion, their beliefs
and aspirations, their experiences in forests, villages and prison cells, their
relationships with one another and with local communities, the tensions between
individual Maoist leaders, their conflicting aims and strategies.
Who were the Maoist leaders and what were their motivations? How did they
relate to and direct their cadre? How did their ideological and personal
differences shape the dynamics of the movement?
Tens of thousands of young men and women from Nepal’s villages took part
in the rebellion. They were inducted into a tightly knit body of cadres with a
fierce sense of mission and commitment. What drove them to join the Maoist
cause despite the great risks involved? A large proportion of Maoists were
women, many of whom joined the rebels in the hope of breaking the shackles of
patriarchy. How did they experience the war? Was it fear or sympathy that led
civilians in Maoist-controlled villages to acquiesce to Maoist demands? How did
the ill-equipped, loosely organized bands of fighters grow into the formidable
People’s Liberation Army? In order to illustrate the gradual expansion of the
Maoists’ military power, this book will pay close attention to a few of the
decisive battles that took place between 1996 and 2005.
A large proportion of the Maoist rank and file belonged to historically
marginalized castes and ethnic groups. What led many members of these groups
to support a movement led primarily by high-caste men? How did the Maoist
leaders seek to resolve the tension between class struggle and ethnic assertion?
Did they mobilize caste and ethnic groups for purely instrumental reasons, as
some critics claim?
This book tries to answer such questions by drawing on the vast corpus of
Maoist writings from Nepal. These include ideological and strategic documents,
statements and circulars issued by the leadership, battle plans drafted by Maoist
military commanders, and the memoirs, novels, diaries and letters that reveal the
inner lives of those who fought the war. The present narrative is largely based on
the evidence found in these sources, the bulk of which have not been translated
into English or otherwise used by scholars. Interviews with militants at various
levels of the party hierarchy supplement this material. I have also made use of
the large body of scholarly and journalistic literature that explores various
aspects of the Maoist movement. By weaving personal stories into an account of
the broader social and political process, the book tries to depict Nepal’s Maoist
rebellion as a human event made up of individual choices and destinies –
something more than the ineluctable march of history.
Aditya Adhikari
25 April 2013